Practice is an essential component in any endeavor, including marksmanship in both firearms and archery. The practice of marksmanship, in either firearms or bow and arrow, uses targets to improve accuracy and precision. Typically, target practice occurs on a shooting range or other protected environment. Paper targets are widely used due to their low cost and portable nature. Paper targets also allow for the shooter to retain a well-shot target as a trophy or souvenir demonstrating the shooter's prowess.
Currently, paper targets have begun to mimic the size and shape of the intended target to give a degree of familiarity with the appropriate aim/target points of a real-life target. In the case of hunting targets, a target will often present a recognizable image of the game animal. Similarly, targets whose purpose is for self-defense, military, and police training will include the image of a would-be assailant. While these targets give a more realistic target for the shooter, they do not provide accuracy feedback to the shooter in the form of whether the practice shots have struck locations on the target that would incapacitate the target subject (e.g., the would-be target's vital organs).
More recent targets, including those in the prior art below, superimpose an outline of these vital organs over the target image to provide the “incapacitation” feedback to the shooter. While these prior art targets do provide feedback to the shooter, the outline of the target's vital organs can often be seen resulting in a virtual “bulls-eye” or aim-point that can be focused on. In other versions, the outline of the vital organs is very faint, which, while giving feedback to the shooter when viewed up-close, lacks the rewarding trophy aspect as only close inspection of the target will reveal the shooter's “true” accuracy.
Some prior art targets include U.S. Pat. No. 2,090,930 which issued Aug. 24, 1937 to William Chubb for a SMALL ARMS TARGET SCORING GAUGE AND TARGET discloses a dual layer target having a transparent layer having vital organs thereon which is laid over a traditional silhouette image.
United States Patent App. Pub. No. 2007/0262529 published on Nov. 15, 2007 to Jackie Gamez et al. for a MULTI-COLORED VISISHOT PAPER TARGET discloses another paper target with a plastic sheet overlay. In this target, the paper layer provides the vital or “effective” zones in high contrasting colors, while the overlay has a silhouette of the game animal covering the back layer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,275,890 which issued C. Steven Wolf et al. for a GUN TARGET WITH CONTRASTING BACKING discloses dual layer target having a paper front layer and a plastic rear layer having a high contrast color. When the bullet passes through the target the plastic stretches/deforms slightly to produce a slightly smaller hole which gives a shooter visible ring within the bullet hole.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,207,567 which issued Apr. 24, 2007 to Jeffrey Brown for an ANATOMICAL WEAPONS QUALIFICATION TARGET discloses target having a faint anatomical structures within the image. These structures are invisible at a distance of seven yards, but are visible when closer.
While the above prior art target patents provide feedback to the shooter, there is still a need for a target that provides the realistic image of a would-be target along with the capacity to provide both a readily visible feedback and a reward aspect.